


two public high schoolers with magic vs. three magically rich private school boys and a ghost

by elliptical



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Codependency, Divergence: Prior to canon, F/M, Healthy Relationships, Learning to Be Healthy Human Beings, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Pining, Polyamory, Psychic Abilities, Slow Burn, Touch-Starved, Working out feelings, canon-typical abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 17:21:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20362225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: Here's what happened:Adam’s mother’s card was declined.  As he hunched at the front of the line, miserably turning out his pockets, he found three crumpled bills that were still technically usable, even if any self-respecting vending machine wouldn’t take them.  He handed them to the cashier.  His ears burned, and his head was ducked as he grabbed the items and moved out of the store.He did not notice the shaved-headed boy at the other register.At fourteen years old, Adam moved from his shitty backwater hick middle school to a larger, equally shitty backwater hick high school.  It was there that he met Blue Sargent.They could have stayed Adam-and-Blue, tumultuous and loving and confused and hopeful and hopeless, if at sixteen Blue hadn't seen a rain-spattered spirit in an Aglionby sweater.And if Richard Campbell Gansey III, Ronan Lynch, Noah Czerny, and Henry Cheng hadn't descended on Nino's during her shift the day after.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> quick note on the tags: the individual relationships tagged are relationships i'm planning to explore and develop in-depth in this fic. the overarching poly tag is because i'm also planning for them to be polyamorous. these 2 things can coincide.
> 
> hello! i mentioned to my trc group chat that i was pondering an AU where adam went to blue's high school instead of aglionby, and then an absolute GENIUS suggested, "what if adam not being there means henry becomes friends with the gangsey sooner," and then i couldn't not write it.
> 
> i'm seven thousand words deep into this draft now and barely scratching the surface. lord have mercy

Here's what happened:

Adam’s mother’s card was declined. As he hunched at the front of the line, miserably turning out his pockets, he found three crumpled bills that were still technically usable, even if any self-respecting vending machine wouldn’t take them. He handed them to the cashier. His ears burned, and his head was ducked as he grabbed the items and moved out of the store.

He did not notice the shaved-headed boy at the other register.

He did not hatch a dream about attending Aglionby and then making Ivy League. Why would he do that? He set his ambitions on smaller goals -- ruthless, focused, and driven, but relentlessly practical. Step one: Getting out of Henrietta. Step two: Literally everything else. He studied and learned and prepared for a career as an auto mechanic. If he got enough experience, he could land a job straight out of high school. Mechanics made enough to live on, usually. He’d be out-of-home free.

At fourteen years old, Adam moved from his shitty backwater hick middle school to a larger, equally shitty backwater hick high school. It was there that he met Blue Sargent, a relentlessly practical girl.

Adam and Blue became friends, which was only surprising if you saw them at a glance. There was a kinship between them, a mutual understanding that not everything was possible, and that when something was impossible, you had to get the next best possible thing.

It was four months into freshman year when Blue finally, grudgingly, brought Adam home to meet her family. He didn’t find the hesitance strange. He had sort of assumed that her family was the same as his, a place for escaping, a void that tainted happy things. It was only when he stepped inside that he realized: Blue was embarrassed.

Because she was _loved._

And her family, strange group of seemingly-unrelated psychic women that they were -- her family took a keen interest in Adam.

\---

The first and worst time they fought was entirely, one hundred percent, unequivocally Blue’s fault.

In fairness, she would tell herself later, her feelings _were_ valid, and she was not operating with all the information at play, and she was fourteen, but even so. Persephone’s work with Adam had begun taking Blue's time away from both of them, and Blue kept dropping by the house to find that Adam was present at readings she hadn’t been asked to amplify, and -- well, jealousy is a bitch. She didn't even _like_ sitting in on readings, but there the jealousy was anyway, ugly and malevolent.

She tried to point out in (debatably) reasonable tones that it was super weird that he seemed to be getting more face time with her mom than she was, and he pointed out in (debatably) passive tones that he wasn’t treading anywhere uninvited, and she said in (horribly) unreasonable tones -- words that would later make her flinch, cover her ears, squeeze her eyes shut to scrub out the memory --

“_Stop stealing my family._”

Adam’s face had gone white, and his mouth had tightened around the edges, and his hands had curled into fists, and there was a second -- just a second, half a second, a fleeting notion -- where Blue thought, _This is why women are afraid of men._

Not that Adam was particularly threatening. She could have taken him in a brawl. He was the kind of wiry just shy of underweight, the kind you get from working underneath cars for hours without eating enough protein. In a macho action film, Adam would be the up-and-coming street fighter prior to an Eye of the Tiger training montage.

But Blue knew in that one-sixteenth-iota-flicker-pulse that she had the _capacity_ to be afraid of him, and she didn’t like it.

He didn’t do anything violent. He closed his eyes and exhaled quietly, evenly, for six seconds. Then he nodded, said “Okay,” and walked away.

Later, years later, when they finally talked about it, Adam confessed to Blue that that was the moment he learned he could be afraid of _himself_, too. That for an equally brief moment, the rage had choked him so badly he felt like his body was a loaded gun. That if not for Persephone’s quiet, calm voice in his head, he thought the anger might have won.

But that was years later. The immediate aftermath was this:

Blue knew right away that she was in the wrong, except she didn’t want to admit it to herself. She’d like to claim that she didn’t follow because she was giving him space, but in truth, a petty and spiteful part of her wanted _him_ to come back. He probably wouldn’t apologize, but at least if he yelled then they could both be pissed.

She knew, in her gut, that she had not and was not handling the situation correctly. She even knew how a rational person would have communicated. “Hello, Adam. I see that you’ve become close with my family. They’re a good family, and I’m happy to share them with you. I imagine psychic tendencies require the kind of lessons you can’t get in school. But I am not psychic, and I feel like I’m losing everyone I care about because of it, and I am afraid that my family won’t love me anymore if they have you instead.”

That would have conferred quite a bit more vulnerability than she wanted to, though, so clearly “Stop stealing my family” was second best.

She groaned and threw herself on her bed and pulled a pillow over her face and screamed dramatically, since it’s a teenager’s god-given right to be dramatic, and then she biked to Adam’s house to apologize.

Blue knew where Adam lived, and she knew it was a trailer park, but she’d never been there before. Adam’s address was not a state secret. He’d freely admit to being poor as dirt and living in the ugliest place in Henrietta. But he had been weirdly stubborn about her not coming over. The space was too small, he explained. She’d laughed -- as if the three hundred people in her house at any given moment didn’t make the space cramped -- but he’d been gently and firmly insistent.

She knew why before she even stepped onto the porch. She was putting her kickstand down and dismounting from her bike when the door blew open. Adam exited not quite at a sprint, but at a frantic half-running pace that made it clear he was escaping something without wanting to be seen escaping something. He was clutching his arm. A man who was presumably his father followed and bellowed something about “don’t show your face here again,” but he didn’t follow Adam down the steps.

In the time it took Blue to unfreeze from shock, the man had gone back inside, and the echo of the slamming door rang in the air, and Adam had noticed her, and his face had whitened all over again.

“I can expl -- _what are you doing_.”

Blue thought it was pretty obvious what she was doing, but she clarified, “Giving him a piece of my mind,” as she marched onto the bottom porch stair.

He reached out and grabbed her hand with the hand that had been holding his arm. She was ready to fight when she turned around, fully prepared to take her fury and sink it into the worst possible target, when she realized he was bleeding.

There was blood smeared on her hand like the most unsanitary schoolyard pact of all time. It had come from his own hand, which had been stopping his other arm from trickling red into the dusty dirt.

“Adam --”

“I’m fine,” he snarled. The snarl was more feral than the tightened anger of before, but nothing in Blue was afraid. This Adam was an animal caught in a trap, snapping at anyone who attempted rescue. He was hurt and frightened and humiliated, and he didn’t want her to see, but there was no doubt whatsoever in her mind that he wouldn’t hurt her.

Her voice came out softer than she’d thought she could make it. “Adam.”

“Don’t.” He drew his hand away and pressed it back over the wound. It didn’t make the injury any less apparent. There was blood between his fingers, trickling down his arm, smeared across the back of Blue’s palm where the pad of his thumb had pressed. But that did help the rest of Adam’s blood to stay in his body.

He was still bleeding because the wound was a ragged laceration that was deep without being wide. Blue didn’t think that kind of irregular pattern could be caused by a dog bite, or a knife slash, or a bullet. She did think, though, that a glass beer bottle hurled with enough force could make that kind of shatter-bruising impact.

“You need to go to the emergency room,” she told him calmly. He didn’t want to talk about what had happened; that was fine. She’d pay attention to the practical side of things.

Adam didn’t say a word, so Blue pressed on. “You need stitches, and disinfectant, and to make sure there’s no debris inside. You can ride on my handlebars. I’ll take you.”

Adam released his arm and took both of her hands in his bloody ones. The pressure of his grip was firm but not restraining, carefully calculated not to be forceful. He looked her in the eyes, his jaw set, and each word was enunciated and calm so there was no doubting how serious he was.

“I would rather die.”

Blue swallowed the urge to argue with him. They could fight later, when the caged panic had left Adam’s eyes and he was thinking clearly and he wouldn’t run off if she messed up. For now, he was bleeding, and she needed to get him somewhere safe, and there was no way she was coaxing him anywhere near a doctor.

“You can ride on my handlebars,” she told him again. It would be a clunky and unbalanced journey at best, but that was fine. “I’m taking you home.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the women of fox way are very worried about adam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do you know what i love most about this concept?? the adam and blue being longtime best friends concept??  
how much earlier adam gets to experience love

It is a fact of basic human decency that Adam would have had a family at Fox Way even if his dad _didn’t_ beat the shit out of him. He would have had a family even if he hadn’t been psychic. Blue didn’t _need_ Adam to be hurt to realize that her jealousy was irrational; she’d managed to come to that conclusion her own damn self, thank you very much. And as far as the women at Fox Way were concerned, Adam was Blue’s Person. Blue had a historical inability to meet or maintain People, which meant that Adam was a precious commodity that should be protected at all costs.

And, you know, he was a good kid. It was because of Blue that he was first invited into Fox Way, but it was being a good kid that kept him being invited back.

Despite Adam being her Person, Blue had not considered whether she had romantic feelings for him. There were way bigger priorities, and also, she couldn’t have romantic feelings for people because she was cursed, so she just wasn’t going to.

And _also_ also, convincing her mother to let a same-age friend-boy move into the house seemed like a more hopeful endeavor if they had never kissed, would never kiss, and hadn’t even thought about kissing.

Maura, to Blue’s surprise, had no issues with the idea -- not even when Blue offhandedly mentioned that Adam could share her room to avoid further cramping the house. Blue had been tensed for an argument, and she didn’t know what to do with the coiled energy afterward. 

Maura was the kind of mother that had molded Blue into a person dubbed “fiercely independent” or “argumentative and disruptive,” depending on the report card. But she did get a little tetchy regarding Blue’s walking time bomb status. Probably she didn’t want to have to bury a body. And Blue was reasonably sure her mother liked Adam, which added another layer of complications. In Blue’s mind, Maura would not want her semi-adopted son-boy in constant danger from her daughter’s killer mouth.

What Blue failed to realize, partly because she had no concept of how young she and Adam seemed to Maura, was that Maura had other priorities. Adam and Blue kissing? Problematic concept. Adam continuing to live in a home plagued by domestic violence, where he’d be continuously traumatized and suffer injuries he might not heal from? Unacceptable. She’d have to be a monster to let it continue.

No, Maura and Calla and Persephone were no obstacle to Adam having a safe home. The obstacle, to Blue’s hair-pulling frustration, was Adam.

His stubbornness was peculiar. It had none of the fury or the desperation that Blue had come to expect. Instead, he leaned on his Henrietta accent and used tones so measured and even that he could make the most infuriating sentiments sound like an inarguable truth. It was impossible for Blue to debate with him, because the calmer he got, the madder she felt.

“I won’t do this,” he said very politely. He was sitting at the kitchen table in a faded long-sleeved shirt that showed his midriff every time he stretched. Every so often, he’d reach to scratch at the fabric-hidden stitches that Calla had given him days earlier, then remember and stop himself.

Blue was at an adjacent side, close enough to touch him, with Maura and Calla making up the other two. Persephone was a cloud of blond hair wandering in and out. The air smelled like the pie she was baking.

Maura frowned. “If it’s the legal issues you’re worried about, we’ll talk to a social worker. There has to be a judge who will offer guardianship. They’re supposed to work in the best interests of the child. I don’t much trust the justice system, but…”

Blue, personally, was not very confident that the justice system would rule in their favor. It was true that judges weighed the child’s choice of home heavily in decisions. It was also true that if Adam wasn’t living with his parents or emancipated, the sensible option would be to place him with amicable friends. Unnecessary entry to a foster home or foisting him on some unknown relative wouldn’t be ideal. Better for him to stay in the same school district with people who loved him.

It was just that they lived in rural Virginia, and there were a million unrelated psychic women in the house, and it would probably look like they were recruiting Adam into a cult.

Blue was certain Adam had come to this conclusion as well, but he was intelligent enough to realize the line of argument wouldn’t hold up. He bypassed it entirely.

“I’m grateful, ma’am,” he said. Blue was not sure she’d ever heard him call Maura ‘ma’am’ before. “But I won’t do this. When I’m eighteen, I’ll get my own place. Until then, I’ll manage.”

“Adam,” Maura started, but she was cut off by Calla’s flat, “He’ll kill you.”

Adam’s eyebrows raised. “Is that a psychic prediction?”

“It’s a common sense prediction,” Calla snapped. She had no particular interest in beating around the bush. The wonderful thing about Calla was that being angry all the time meant being able to say harsh things without hurting feelings. _Oh, she’s always like that. She just tells it like it is._

“Well.” Adam’s mouth twitched. He was, Blue surmised, trying hard to stay composed and polite while unable to resist being a smartass. “With a little more study, I should see him coming.”

Persephone had been disengaged from the conversation thus far. Since she was moving in and out of the room, she couldn’t have heard every word spoken with clarity. But her breathy voice issued from the corner, where she was now sifting through a thick cookbook so caked with dust it made Blue’s nose itch.

“You could always,” she offered, with the mild interest of someone pointing out a fat squirrel on a tree, “kill him.”

“Absolutely _not,_” Maura said.

Blue raised her hand. “I will help with body disposal.”

Calla’s mouth curved into a sharp-edged smile. “Call me first. I know where to dig.”

Patricide was, apparently, where Adam drew the line. Even justified patricide. In retrospect, Blue thought, it was probably bad form to discuss murdering someone’s abusive parent in front of them.

Adam stood up from the table. His close-mouthed smile was supposed to extend the Southern politeness, but it looked wrong on his face. Blue tried to decide why and realized it was the tightness of his eyes. His gaze was so pained, the smile became a rictus yanked upward on puppet strings.

“Thank you all very much for the help and advice,” he said. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me. I promise I’ll be safe. I should get home before dark.”

He’d turned and exited before Blue could process that he was leaving. She didn’t need a psychic premonition to know she should follow. Awful words, friendship-ending words, clogged her throat. _Go ahead, then. Run away like you run away from anything hard._

She swallowed them. They were cruel and unfair and most of all, she didn’t mean them. Adam escaping an uncomfortable conversation was not the same as Adam escaping his father. She could be irritated with the former without damning the latter.

“Adam,” she called. He was halfway down the driveway already, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets. The elongated shadows of sundown painted his silhouette stretched and thin against the ground. The creaky front door banged shut behind Blue as she hurled herself down the steps. “Adam!”

“I’m _fine_, Blue,” he said, but his voice was strained and his ears were red and he wasn’t turning around.

“Is it about what I said? About stealing my family? Because you’re not, I know you’re not, you never have been, I’m just _stupid_ and I don’t say what I mean and I’m afraid of losing them and I’m afraid of losing you and, newsflash, I am _way_ more afraid of losing you if you go back to that _hellhole_ than if you -- Adam -- _dammit._” She was crying now, and furious about it, pressing the palms of her hands to her eyes. “You’re already family. You’re already my family. You can’t steal my family when you’re part of it, that’s stupid. Adam.”

She was pretty sure it was the tears that turned him around and not the less-than-eloquent speech, which was humiliating, but whatever. She could make some concessions if it got him to _stop._

He didn’t speak. Blue wasn’t sure if that was because he didn’t know what to say or didn’t trust his voice. There was a frozen moment between them, probably two seconds but burned into a forever memory. Then Adam moved toward her, surety in his gait, none of the wariness she expected.

For a second, she was terrified that he was about to kiss her. She almost threw her hands up to stop him, but then she was glad she hadn’t. Instead of leaning down, he wrapped his arms around her and tugged her against his chest. His hold was so gentle that his skin was a brush of feathers against hers. He spread his fingers against her arm, the pads of them pressing so carefully, like he wanted the reminder that she was alive. When he pressed his face into her hair, his breathing was a rasp.

In other circumstances, being held like this could have annoyed Blue. She might be short and a girl, but she wasn’t fragile. She was an intensely physical person, and if someone was going to hold her, they’d better be prepared for all-in bone-crushing lung-squeezing koala clinging.

But she didn’t think that Adam saw her as fragile. Not even in a subconscious completely-accidental-misogyny way. She didn’t think it had anything to do with her at all. It was more like Adam needed to remember that his own body and hands could be gentle. That he was not a weapon of mass destruction. That there were precious things in his life, things worth living for, things to keep him anchored.

A well-worn callus on his thumb brushed against Blue’s elbow. She’d stopped crying, and could breathe well enough through her stuffy nose to know that his shirt smelled like engine oil and sweat and the cheap detergent he’d tried to scrub those smells away with.

A jolt went through her stomach.

She thought, _Oh no._

“I would do anything--” Adam started, and broke off with a ragged gasp. Blue did not think he was crying. He was fighting for air.

Blue wrapped her arms around him and spread her own fingers against his back. “You can stay. I promise you can stay.”

His whole body shook, just once. He took two more sharp breaths. Pressed this close, Blue could _feel_ him put himself back together like he was slotting drawers into a dresser. Breath, even and into the stomach. Shaking, stilled. Tightness, relaxed. Posture, straightened. He stepped back and disentangled himself, which was an endeavor given how tightly her palms were pressed against his shirt.

“I’m all right.” Then, as she started to protest -- “No, I’m all right. I need -- I need it to be all right. Just for tonight. I’ll be fine.”

Blue didn’t know how to get him back. He’d shut himself behind a wall and hidden the key.

“You’ll call,” she said. “If you’re hurt.”

“I will.”

“You’re not saying goodbye to me.”

“I’m not.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I promise.”

“Okay.” Blue bit her lip. “We’re going to revisit this later. Just so you know.”

“All right.”

“I love you.”

He smiled, and this time his eyes crinkled just enough to make it genuine, even if the expression was a little sad. “I know. I love you too.”

It wasn’t until he’d disappeared down the road that Blue remembered Adam didn’t have a cell phone. Stupid, given that she didn’t have one either, but the Fox Way landline was easy enough to access when it wasn’t tied up by the psychic hotline.

Adam wouldn’t be able to call if he’d been run out of his home.

And Blue doubted any of the neighbors would offer him a phone. Not when they saw the public scenes Robert Parrish made and looked the other way.

Adam wouldn’t be able to call if he was hurt, bleeding. Dying.

Maybe that was the curse. If she kissed him, he probably wouldn’t be able to stay with her, even if Maura agreed. She couldn’t imagine explaining _that_ situation to a judge. And if Adam didn’t have a place with her, maybe he wouldn’t survive to eighteen.

“I will know,” said a soft voice beside her.

Blue found Persephone standing to her right. She had apparently floated so soundlessly that Blue hadn’t felt her approach. The woman placed her fingertips against Blue’s arm, exactly where Adam’s touch still burned in her memory.

Persephone had a habit of randomly appearing places, so Blue wasn’t particularly startled. She just frowned. “You’ll know what?”

“If he’s hurt. I will know.”

Blue wanted to follow Adam into the dark, drag him back, make him sleep off the idiocy like a hangover under a hand-knitted afghan on the old couch. But she didn’t know what she could say.

“You’d better,” she muttered to Persephone, and turned and re-entered the house.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> adam and blue have to face some hard truths

And things were okay for a while, and Adam either avoided his father’s wrath or avoided letting Blue know for a while, and the bruises and scrapes were easy enough to hide for a while, until things weren’t okay. Nothing was okay about the situation to begin with, and Adam knew that Blue would insist on action if she thought he was unsafe, so he bit down on the pain as if he wasn’t constantly in a house full of psychics.

They were fifteen. The particulars didn’t matter. Adam was already blocking them out of his mind. Once the adrenaline had stopped flooding his synapses and the roaring had eased from his ears, there was just survival. He needed to stop reliving the moment, so he did. Later he would play through it over and over again, picking it apart, putting it back together, exploring everything that could have happened differently on a miserable and incessant loop.

He stopped. Inhaled. Exhaled. The winter night air was a knife in his lungs. It cleared his head.

Feeling emotions would have ruined him, so he didn’t. He catalogued his situation in bullet points, list format, outline for an essay, bare bones notation of the world around and inside him.

1\. It was an unusually cold night. Not below zero, but cold enough to see his breath. Cold enough to be shivering. Twenty, windchill brought it down to fifteen, he thought he remembered the weather channel saying.

2\. His badly-fitting sneakers had been duct taped to keep the soles attached to the tops, and he’d worn deeply enough through the sole to feel the ground against his left big toe, and there wasn’t exactly great insulation against the cold.

3\. He was not wearing socks. Or a jacket. Or a sweatshirt. His outfit consisted of threadbare pajama pants, a yellow t-shirt that had probably been white once, the aforementioned sneakers, and his backpack.

4\. There was frost on the ground.

5\. His right leg was hurt. He could not walk to Blue’s.

6\. He did not have a phone.

7\. There was nowhere else to go.

His mind butted up against the conundrum. Panic wasn’t an option, nor did it occur to him. He was already working at a solution, chewing on it like a complex equation. He’d keep trying solutions until he was literally incapable; that was how he’d made it this far.

Maybe his mother --

But no, that wouldn’t be an option. Her face had been cold and closed off; she’d turned away when his father hurled his sneakers after him. “Just go, Adam.”

_”There’s frost on the ground --”_

_“Then take the fucking shoes that I bought for you with the sweat on my back, and don’t say I’ve never _done anything for you.”

His cheek was bruising from where the right shoe had clocked him in the face. It was comical, probably. He’d laugh later, probably. Right now his face felt too swollen and pained to laugh. At least the cold might have a numbing effect.

The neighbors, then. Asking to use a phone. But he couldn’t shake the image of him from the outside. Bruised boy in pajamas, troublemaker from down the street, and anyone who saw him would wonder what he’d done to get kicked out. Violent, unstable, dangerous. No one would open the door.

Someone might open the door. But if no one did, he would be wasting his energy and his time dragging a bum leg up porch steps for nothing. Fucking nothing.

The cons outweighed the benefits. He couldn’t risk it.

Maybe he could knock on the door of his parents’ home and beg.

He was not sure, though, that his father wouldn’t grab his gun.

Okay. Fine. He’d walk. Hitchhike, maybe, as if anyone would be out at this time of night. He’d try to make it as far as a convenience store, and ask to use their phone, and they’d probably call the cops, but that was fine. He’d deal with that at the time. He just had to put one foot in front of the other.

About five minutes into his limping, he remembered there were psychic channels he could scan. He poked at the inside of his head like he was stirring up coals in a fire, but as far as he could tell, his ESP cable connection sucked.

Twenty minutes, he had hobbled off of the frosted dirt impression that was the road into his neighborhood. An hour and his feet and hands were both numb, and he would have continued further if his leg hadn’t gone out from under him. He’d made it maybe one-third of the way to Blue’s. The road was deserted.

He pulled himself into a sitting position on the shoulder. He was cold, and tired, and hurt, and he physically could not make it further. Someone would happen by or they wouldn’t. It was fine.

He was so fucking tired.

“Adam,” said a voice.

He looked up and found Persephone, magnificent and impossible, a wreath of golden hair haloed by the cold moonlight. Persephone had never sought him out in this particular plane while he was conscious before, but he knew what was happening even before he noticed that her legs faded before they touched the ground.

He raised a hand in greeting. “Hey.”

“Hello,” Persephone said. She looked him up and down like she was assessing a prize poodle at a dog show. “Oh dear.”

“I’ve had better nights,” he admitted. “You should probably head back to your body.”

“I will.” Her image wavered. “Maura is coming. In the car. I am relaying information to Calla, and Calla is speaking to her on the phone. She will be here soon.”

“Okay,” Adam said.

Persephone opened her mouth was if she was going to say something else, and then she was gone.

It was not long before the beam of headlights cut the night. The car pulled up, Maura and Blue got out, dragged him into the backseat, and started off again. Maura’s jaw was clenched. Blue had her forehead leaned against the window, her face drawn and ill-looking.

“I would like to bring you to the hospital.” Maura was trying so hard to keep her voice measured that it made Adam’s stomach knot. He’d used that tone often enough. “I don’t think you have a broken leg, given how far you’ve walked, but I am very concerned about the swelling in your knee. And your face should get looked at.”

“I don’t have insurance.”

Blue flinched. Adam felt that as another gut punch. He turned to look out the window instead of at either of them.

“We’ll get a long-term payment plan. I’ll take care of it.”

But Adam knew that ‘taking care of it’ for the women of Fox Way, who were about on the same level poverty-wise as his parents, would be a hardship that didn’t let up for months. Years, maybe. He did not say what he was thinking because it wouldn’t be helpful. But he was thinking it hard enough that Maura, who was psychic, and Blue, who knew him better than anybody, could probably pick it up.

_You shouldn’t have rescued me._

“Please don’t,” he said instead.

Blue turned around in her seat so she could level a glare at him. She waited to start in on her tirade until he’d met her eyes. “Adam Parrish. If you think getting a doctor to look at you is somehow more burdensome than sitting in my house, sick and hurt, with me not _knowing_ how sick and hurt you are, and me staying up all night worried about you, and scared, and wishing you’d see a doctor, and…” She broke off. “Just stop. Adam. Just stop.”

“Can we…” He looked back out the window. There was a keening in his ears. “Look, I’ll make a deal, okay? If my leg still looks bad by the morning, I’ll go. But strains and sprains are supposed to be treated with rest and elevation anyway. So I’ll -- I’ll rest tonight, and I’ll go in the morning if I have to. I won’t fight.”

Even avoiding looking at her, Adam could feel the unhappiness pulsing from Blue in waves. He wanted to curl up around her and rest his face in her spiky hair and never move again.

Maura sighed and pulled into the driveway of Fox Way. She must have guessed he’d fight her even before she started the conversation. Whether that was a psychic premonition or just knowing him was up for debate. “Calla’s making up the couch.”

Adam nodded and allowed them to help him limp into the house.

\---

The frantic search for Adam had turned the quiet house into a bustle of activity. Persephone had been the one to predict it, startling awake with a cry, hand clapped to her face like her cheek ached. That was how she’d moved from room to room, rousing Maura and Calla and Blue. By the time Persephone unearthed a scrying bowl from the kitchen, Maura and Blue were zipping into jackets and rushing to the car, and every other aunt and cousin in the house was awake.

Adam bore the well-meaning smothering of Jimi and the nosiness of Orla and the curious peeping of multiple little cousins with surprisingly good grace, considering he was dead on his feet. He sat on the couch-turned-bed with one of Maura’s ill-fated teas clutched in his hands. Blue knew he wasn’t really present because he kept sipping on the concoction without making a face.

Adam had this tendency, sometimes, to disappear inside himself. Less and less often these days -- or maybe just less noticeably. But Blue could tell he was fading. He’d have put most of himself away during the initial incident and subsequent walking. What pieces remained had withdrawn when they’d argued about the hospital, and anything left would be annihilated by the continued attention and whispering around him.

Blue sat down on the arm of the couch. “I’ve got a question for you.”

Adam’s voice was toneless. “Okay.”

“Can you make it up the steps if you lean on me?”

She waited for him to point out that she was too short to be an effective singular crutch, so that she could bristle indignantly and he could smile and something could slip back to normal.

Adam said, “I’ll try.”

Getting up the stairs was an arduous process that involved a lot of trial and error. It could have been a moment of levity, the two of them snickering about how their combined three legs weren’t balancing like a footstool, except Adam wasn’t really here. His arm curled around her shoulders, fingers gripping her shirt, none of their skin touching. Blue hauled him up the steps by harnessing all the strength in her tiny body. From there, helping him down the hallway and letting him collapse into her bed was easy.

He’d been up here plenty of times before. She didn’t have anything to hide. Her room was a cluttered, creative explosion of her inner self. It had her energy all over the walls. If nothing else, that could help relax him.

“Can hypothermia have a delayed onset?” Blue asked. “Like, could you have been fine in the car and be dying now? I need you to tell me if you’re dying.”

“I don’t think I’m dying.” He paused, considered. “I don’t feel awesome, though.”

“Okay.” Blue got up and closed the bedroom door. “I’m going to ask you to do something that’ll sound weird, so bear with me.”

“Okay.”

“Can you take your shirt off?”

Adam squinted at her. “I do not have wounds on my chest.”

“I’m not checking for _wounds.”_

“Then what are you checking for?”

Blue let out an exasperated sigh. “Seducing you with my wiles. Come on, Adam.”

“I just want to know.”

It was about then that she realized he wasn’t being argumentative for the sake of it; whatever force that kept his body going when his self had retreated _really_ didn’t want her to see his bare skin.

Softness and pity were only liable to make him more miserable. And anger would keep him away from her. She put a hand on her hip, deciding for normal irritation instead. “Okay, mechanic boy. Let me spell it out in words you understand.” 

With her free hand, she made a sweeping gesture toward the bed. “Car spun its tires in the snow for an hour and now the battery’s dead and it’s also out of gas.” Sweeping gesture toward herself. “Jumpstarter cables. Or a spare battery. Or something. Whatever. I want to lie down with you.”

Adam didn’t respond with words, but he did pull his shirt over his head. Rather than tossing it aside, he folded it up, methodical, and set it on the bedside table.

Blue tugged off the knitted blue-and-purple sweater monstrosity that was currently serving as winter pajamas, leaving just the black camisole underneath. She did not look at Adam’s torso just as surely as Adam was avoiding her bare shoulders. First of all, he didn’t want her looking; second of all, she was worried she’d have an attack of hormonal puberty thoughts, and she wasn’t _actually_ trying to seduce him.

She sat on the bed beside him, tugged her pajama-clothed legs up, and touched his shoulder.

He responded like she’d smacked his chest with a defibrillator. His spasm-cry was so violent and sharp that she jerked back, eyes wide, terrified that she’d somehow managed to break something loose inside him. Then terrified that something else was wrong, that they should have brought him to a hospital anyway and said damn the consequences.

Adam rolled over onto his stomach, putting space between them. He pressed his swollen face into the pillow and clasped both hands behind his head. Blue could see the taut muscles in his shoulders, the tension in his back. He drew his knees up under himself so that his back was bowed, each bump of his spine visible, long green shadows cast by her bedside lamp, like a supplicant before a god.

He stayed like that for a solid minute. Blue barely breathed, taking in shallow gulps to supplement the roaring in her ears.

Then he turned onto his back again and stretched out. His injured leg he moved carefully, uncurling his knee much more slowly than he’d originally curled it. When he looked up at her, his face was clear, and she could see the light in his eyes again.

“Why did the car battery die if the engine was running?” he asked.

She blinked. _“What?”_

“The psychic car that needs jumpstarting. Tires spun in the snow, so the engine was on. Then it ran out of gas and the battery died at the same time? Doesn’t make sense.”

“The psychic car kept going when it shouldn’t have and messed up everything inside it. I don’t need to make sense. My metaphors are great, so shut up.”

“In fairness,” he pointed out, “the car was probably in the middle of the wilderness with no GPS signal, and it couldn’t connect to any of its car friends, so it figured it had to try.”

“In fairness,” she snapped back, “the car wouldn’t have ended up in the middle of the wilderness with no GPS signal if the car wasn’t a prideful _asshat_ who prefers getting beaten and worrying people sick to being safe and _happy.”_

Adam’s eyes closed. “Ah.”

Blue knew even while she was saying it that it was too far. But she couldn’t bring herself to apologize. Not to put them back to square one and pretend neither of them were hurting the other. She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms tightly around them.

“I just don’t understand,” she whispered.

“Give me a minute,” Adam murmured. “I’m not all the way back yet.”

“Where did you _go?”_

He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke, she could tell each word was picked with precision. “Persephone’s been teaching me to be more aware of my surroundings and myself. Mainly, when to be in my surroundings and when to be inside myself. I think I sort of… accidentally… pulled some blackout curtains down over all of it.”

“What?” Though Blue was not psychic, she knew enough about self-protection to be extremely alarmed. “You cut yourself off _from everything?”_

“It’s not like it sounds.” The weariness was still present in his voice, but at least there was inflection. Feeling. He was trying to communicate important information, which was a start. “I wasn’t -- I didn’t leave. I wouldn’t just up and leave my body. That would kill me. It was more like… I turned everything off. I know where all the switches are, now, so I turned them off. Anti-awareness.”

“And me touching you?”

The ghost of a smile curved his lips. “Jumper cables.”

Blue tucked her cold hands between her thighs like that could keep them from being traitorous hellspawn. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that would happen. I thought…”

Adam propped himself up on his elbows, his brow creased. It was hard not to look at the bruise marring his features, but what made the bruise awful was that it was on _Adam’s_ face. Without the boy attached, the bruise and swelling would be easily passable footnotes.

“What did you think?”

“My mom and Calla and Jimi and Persephone and even Orla sometimes get energy drained. I can usually help. I figured I could at least give you some more energy and then, if you were hurt bad…”

“You could help me fight?”

Blue wrinkled her nose. “I could help you _hold on_ so we could _get help_ and you wouldn’t _have to fight.”_

“Oh. That was real sweet of you.” He flopped back and let his eyes close again. “What happens to your energy, though? If you give it to other people?”

“I take a nap. Small price to pay.”

“You can take a nap now if you gotta.”

“I touched you for exactly point-two seconds. I’m good.”

Adam didn’t respond to that. The steady thrum of his breathing told Blue that he was trying to drift off, but it hadn’t yet relaxed into full slumber. She’d seen him sleep before. Plenty of times, when he’d passed out during a study session or taken a quick nap on the couch or accidentally conked out for the whole night.

Blue couldn’t touch him again. She’d held his hand or brushed her arm against his plenty of times with no repercussions, and logically she knew that this one time was probably a fluke. Illogically, though, she was pretty sure that if she’d kissed Adam just now, she’d have killed him. And what if she’d laid down and pressed her body against his like she’d been planning to do?

“Adam,” she said.

She knew he wasn’t asleep, but if he wanted to pretend, she’d let him. She hadn’t been particularly kind to him, and he’d been through an ordeal, and he deserved some goddamn rest.

Adam hummed. “Yeah?”

“Why don’t you want to live at Fox Way?”

“Why don’t you want to live on the moon?”

“Because the moon is uninhabitable due to its atmospheric conditions and lack of oxygen,” she said. “Otherwise, you couldn’t get me on a rocket fast enough. Fox Way has plenty of atmosphere and occasional breathable oxygen after the aunts have gone to work.”

“I can’t explain.”

“Because I’m not psychic?” She was suddenly fed up and exhausted in a way she’d been staving off, like maybe he actually had leached significant energy. “What, only clairvoyants allowed in the Understanding Basic Motivations club? Screw that. Just so you know, there’s a ton of psychics in this house, and even with all their premonitions combined, I don’t think a _single one_ understands _anything_ about you.”

“Please stop trying to get a rise out of me.”

“Then tell me something that makes sense! Is there something wrong with me?”

“What?” Adam sat straight up. If Blue had known self-deprecation was the way to an honest answer, she’d have tried it ages ago.

“Do you not…” _Like me_ was absurd; they’d been friends for a year, and he could have stopped tolerating her at any time. _Love me_ was too loaded.

“Blue,” he said, and when he reached toward her, she leapt backward off the bed so fast that she skidded on her slippers.

They stared at each other, Adam’s face surprised and hurt, Blue’s chest heaving with shallow breaths. So many things felt broken between them, and she didn’t know how she was ever going to make them right, but Adam was her Person, and she had to try.

She’d fix it. It was going to be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a weird place to cut off the chapter. the reason is that i can't find a good cutoff spot & i wanted to post an update but getting adam and blue's conversation paced correctly has been like pulling teeth  
hopefully i'll have it put together the way i want it soon! and then you can be assured next chapter is a lot of feelings and love.  
in the meantime here's this! sorry about the sudden monthlong absence. as mentioned, getting the writing right has been like pulling teeth  
but i'm still very invested in this project and plan to continue it  
on the bright side it's longer than either of the prior two chapters, so, profit


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> adam and blue talk pt 2

Adam’s hand dropped. “I wasn’t gonna…” he started, but didn’t seem to know how to finish the sentence. “Blue.”

“No, it’s not you, it’s -” She flapped a hand between them. Frustration was once again threatening to make tears fall, like it had ages ago when they’d held each other in the driveway, and she didn’t want to cry. “Everything’s _wrong_ and I don’t know how to make it _right.”_

“I’m ruining it.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, then flinched hard - he seemed to have forgotten the bruise. “I’m gonna - Blue, I’m gonna try, okay? I’m gonna try for the words, but I don’t know if I can find them.”

Blue nodded, curling her arms around her ribcage.

“Can you come sit?” Adam asked, soft. His face was so drawn and unhappy that she wanted to set something on fire.

She padded over and perched on the very edge of the bed, like she was preparing to dive off the starting block at a swim meet. “Just - just don’t touch me, okay?”

Adam drew the quilt over his legs and tucked his hands underneath it like he was sheathing weapons. Because he was Adam, and because he knew her fairly well, he said, “Touching me won’t hurt me, Blue, honest. I’m back awake now.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can’t know it a hundred percent, sure.” He nodded, but he also kept speaking, careful and measured, like he was presenting a step-by-step geometric proof for the approval of a teacher. “I know I don’t usually react how I just did when you touch me. I know I was numb a few minutes ago and now I’m not. I know you didn’t hurt me to begin with, it just might’ve looked for a second like you did.” A pause. “I know I’d rather take the risk than never touch you again, if that’s all it is. Being scared you’ll hurt me, I mean. If it’s not that, if I did something wrong, then - well, I won’t be an asshole, I guess.”

There was a third option he didn’t appear to have taken into consideration, that she just didn’t want his hands on her for reasons that had nothing to do with fear or wrongdoing. Then again, her backward-skidding wild-eyed separation wasn’t the pinnacle of relaxed rejection. If Blue wasn’t in the mood to be touched for neutral reasons, she could have pushed him away without the drama.

“You’re doing pretty okay with words so far,” she said, pulling the quilt over her own legs and laying down.

“These aren’t the hard ones.”

He laid down on his side, facing her, the ever-present furrow between his brows deepening. Blue experienced a moment of senseless distraction at the way his collarbone winged to his wiry shoulders, the curve of his chest disappearing under the quilt, skin nicked with old scars and freckles. It was just a second before she shook herself back to sensibility. When she focused on his face, she discovered _he_ was distracted by the shape of her mouth. Or at least, his eyes had gotten stuck on her lips for some unknown reason.

_God,_ she thought, _but we’re a mess._

She freed her arms from the covers, offered him her hands.

He took them very carefully in both of his. As soon as their skin touched, a spasm of pain flashed across his face. Blue started to pull back, but he curled his fingers tighter, shaking his head. “Don’t-” he started, and broke off. “Don’t. I’m all right.”

She forced herself not to demand an explanation, despite every bone in her body desperately wanting an explanation. Her reward was the way Adam slowly relaxed, the tightness around his mouth and eyes fading, tiredness pulling more heavily at his eyelids than agitation. His hands were a little chilly, but it didn’t feel like he was taking more energy than she had to give. Blue housed enough energy that it would take a long time before the drain became palpable, or so she hoped.

“I won’t have anywhere left to go,” Adam murmured.

Blue made a valiant effort to figure out what the hell he was talking about, failed, and said, “What?”

“Why I can’t live here. I won’t have anywhere left to go.”

Blue frowned. “Why would you need to go anywhere?”

“I - I’m not sure I want to talk about this, actually.”

“Too bad.”

Adam didn’t say anything. He didn’t react, really, except to close his eyes. He looked more tired than he had in a long time, even with Blue’s hands clasped between his, even with his soul and senses firmly attached to his body.

Blue couldn’t understand it. She was _trying,_ even, trying to see the situation from Adam’s point of view, to place herself in his tiny trailer with the parents who hated him and the dead-end life he was so desperate to escape, and she couldn’t understand it.

“The people here don’t-” Adam broke off, abrupt and sharp. “I’m gonna make you angry.”

“You’re already making me angry.”

“I know. I should just-” He broke off again, laughing a little, mirthless and self-deprecating. “But I can’t. I don’t have anywhere to go. Do you get that, Blue? I can’t go home, I can’t walk away from you now because I don’t have anywhere else. I can’t get out. And that’s fine for a night, y’know, we can drive each other crazy for a night, but if I was _living_ here - I can’t get _out.”_

Blue couldn’t keep the hurt off her face, and she was glad that his eyes were still closed. Less glad when he opened them, prompted by the silence, and his face went stricken. She didn’t pull her hands away, but her breath was shaky when she exhaled. Blue tended toward anger when she was hurt - lashing out at Adam would have felt both good and righteously justified. _What, being around me is that horrible? I’m some awful thing you have to escape?_

Instead, she took apart the hurt inside her piece by piece. The stakes were too high to drive Adam away now. He was too important to her, and if she threw a fit, then she’d just be proving his point. If he went back to the trailer park because he thought sharing a roof with her would ruin them, then every pain he suffered at his father’s hands would become partly her fault.

“I’ll fix it,” she whispered. “I know there’s not - not a lot of space here, but I’ll - I’ll give you space when you want it. I promise. I won’t try to keep you. I’ll get better about - I won’t - tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Whatever you need me to do.” 

It sounded needy, pathetic in a way she loathed, and swallowing her stubbornness was an Olympic effort. Blue Sargent didn’t take shit from people, and she wasn’t the type to change herself for a boy, and she harbored a furious disdain for girls who did. What she _wanted_ was to shake Adam into sensibility and prove that she loved him without actually needing to change her approach. When she couldn’t understand Adam’s thought processes, accommodating them regardless was anathema to her general desire to be right.

The stakes were too high. She couldn’t scare him away now. If that meant a slight sacrifice of principle, so be it.

Adam squeezed her hands tighter. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Think it’s you. It’s not you.”

Blue did her best to take a page out of his book and sound both calm and rational, but a little heat leaked through regardless. “You’re scared you won’t have any space when we fight. I’m telling you I’ll give you space. I don’t see how that’s not the proper response.”

“I’m messing this up. I told you I wasn’t gonna be able to find the right words.”

“Okay, tell you what. Close your eyes.”

Adam flashed her a quizzical look, but did as he was told.

“Okay, picture this. It’s spring. We’re sitting on the bus together. When it stops at the end of Fox Way, you get off with me. We come inside and do our homework at the kitchen table. Someone’s got the window open, which is good ‘cause Orla’s been painting her nails in like twelve different colors and the fumes are everywhere. Persephone asks you to sit in on a reading, or Calla comes storming in twelve different kinds of mad about asshole raven boys, or Mom shows up with a bunch of groceries that are probably gonna end up in her terrible teas. One or both of us has work in the evening. When that’s all done, we go to sleep here, in my room - it’d be our room, then - and in the morning, we duck around the usual shuffle and head to the bus stop together, and it’s totally mundane and fine and nothing’s wrong and you never have to go back to that horrible trailer again.”

Adam made a small, wounded sound. Blue didn’t think it was voluntary. She also couldn’t quite tell if it was a sound prompted by longing or unhappiness.

“Is that - would that be something you want?” she finished.

Adam didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “Is that something _you_ want?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t a question that required thought. She’d have wanted him even if his home life was great; she was discovering she had a selfish streak where keeping her loved ones was concerned.

“What if I’m horrible?”

“Are you planning to be horrible?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Then I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

“I do.”

Blue scrutinized him. His eyes were still closed, mouth flat. Maybe it was easier to express himself if he didn’t have to look at her.

“It’s not about fighting with me, is it?” she said softly.

“You just can’t take it back, is all.” He was struggling to sound rational and level; it made the waver in his voice worse. “When you realize you want to, I mean. When I’m taking up too much of your space or I’m too expensive or Persephone realizes I’m useless or your mom gets sick of putting up with my issues or - you can’t take it back. That’s all. When I make everyone unhappy.”

Blue couldn’t help it, dangerous killer touch or no - she pulled one hand from his in favor of wrapping an arm tightly around his waist instead. He closed the gap between them, pressing himself against her chest and tucking his head underneath her chin like a chilly cat seeking comfort after being left in the rain.

“It’s just that I’ll make it awful,” he mumbled against her skin. “And I don’t want it to be awful here. I don’t want this place to have that kind of control over me. I’d rather go home and be able to hide here than stay here and have it become - become -”

“Adam,” she whispered.

“I just don’t want it like that,” he said. “To be rescued like that. The person doing the rescuing gets all the power, they can hurt you just as bad, and you can’t say a word because they got you out of the first situation. I don’t want it like that. I want to get out by myself. You do it yourself, no one can take it away from you. No one’s in control except you.”

Blue said, “You’re being stupid.”

“Okay.”

He sounded resigned, like she’d lived down to his expectations and he didn’t have the strength to be upset by it.

She gritted her teeth, willed herself to have patience. “You know my mom’s never hurt me, right? No one here has ever hurt me.”

“Of course not. You’re wanted.”

She drew the hand that wasn’t wrapped around him through his hair. “You don’t think you’re wanted here?”

“I’m not stupid. I know your family wouldn’t invite me back if they didn’t want me here.” He breathed out. “It’ll just change real quick if I stay. The wanting me, I mean.”

“That’s insane.”

“Thanks.”

“No, look - I don’t know how to explain to you how wrong you are.”

“I do,” said a quiet voice in the doorway.

If anyone was going to eavesdrop, Blue would have expected Orla or Jimi. If anyone was going to eavesdrop and then have conversational input, Blue would have expected Maura. But when she turned to look, Persephone was standing there instead.

Adam sat straight up and grabbed his folded shirt, hastily yanking it back on. It took Blue a second to realize that they had been in a fairly compromising position, her in a thin tank top and him barechested and clinging to her. Probably it was good that it hadn’t been Maura. Even so, Adam’s cheeks and ears were both red. He placed his hands over his face.

“How much of that did you hear?” he asked, and Blue realized his mortification wasn’t just over the physical position they’d been in.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Persephone didn’t look perturbed, but then again, she rarely did. “May I borrow your room, Blue?”

Blue was a little surprised she’d asked. Persephone tended to end up wherever she wanted to be regardless of obstacles in the way, and she never seemed to be where anyone else wanted her to be, exactly like an enigmatic cat.

Adam appeared to be doing an excellent impression of someone melting into a mattress.

“It’s fine,” he muttered, though he sort of looked like he was debating the merits of jumping out the two story window. “It’ll be fine.”

Blue wasn’t sure about that, but she’d exhausted her supply of un-stupiding resources, and maybe Persephone would have a trick up her sleeve that wasn’t in Blue’s arsenal. “I’m gonna be right downstairs,” she said, getting up. “Holler if you need me.”

“Sure,” Adam said, and when he didn’t beg her to stay, Blue slipped past Persephone and into the unstifled hallway.


End file.
